Dealing with constant hard drive corruption (experience most likely required).

[CrossLOPER]

One more thing, why did you title your post "constant hard drive corruption" ?
From the content of your post, I didn't see any signs of that anywhere. On the contrary, you said they replaced your hdd and you STILL have problems.
I'd like to understand what makes you think it's hard drive corruption, because, judging from what you've described to us, sure doesn't sound like it to me.

I posted that because despite restorations and replacements, the HDD seems to become corrupt, in its name anyway.

I would like more info on that live CD method. I've had several people suggest that and I am a novice in trouble shooting computer hardware.

[Blodrast]

For the live cd part, you can go here for example: http://www.slax.org/, although this place http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php
gives out a pretty long list of live cd's you can get.

Then, my idea was that you could run fsck (http://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck) and badblocks (http://linux.die.net/man/8/badblocks) on your disk. Careful with badblocks, you can mess up your disk (I mean, even worse) if you're not doing it properly. I suggest reading the docs on it carefully.

HOWEVER... there may be a problem. If your fs is NTFS, then you may be out of luck. It's been a while since I've been interested in this, so I haven't kept up, and I don't know what the current status with linux support for NTFS is anymore; more specifically, sure, NTFS is supported, both with read and write support, that's all fine, and it's been so for years. That, I know. But for trickier things, like fsck, I don't know if the support is available.

Some google led me to this: http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsprogs
and if you scroll down to the "Users utilities" section, it says:

The following tools are planned, but not yet implemented:

* ntfsck: fsck for NTFS.
* ntfsdefrag: defrag NTFS volumes.

If you have VFAT, then you can use fsck.vfat (http://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck.vfat), and it's all good. But if it's NTFS, you might need to dig deeper and see if anybody wrote an implementation of fsck for NTFS.

All of this of course has the standard disclaimer, if you're unsure of what you're doing then first ask, read the docs carefully, don't sue me/send goons to kill me if you mess your machine up (even worse), etc, etc, etc.

Right. Well, that's my thoughts on this for now. Word of advice, if you do end up using badblocks, it may take a really long time, depending on your disk specs and the kind of errors (if any). Last time I did this, it took several days - and it was a small disk (uhm, like 70GB or so, and it was SCSI, too. True though that the problem was the controller with that one...).

[Sensei Warrior]

I am not, not, not going to claim to be an expert in this arena whatsoever. [Enter Legal Disclaimer Here]. With that said ...

I had a similar experience when I bought my first computer. The computer would act odd (like run slower than the computer would start with the occasional strange error, like TBSOD (Blue Screen of Death), it would decide to reboot itself, the comp would randomly crash for no apparant reason and sometimes rebooting it required a re-install. Oh and it wouldn't play a game at all without locking up about 5 minutes into the game. There was a whole laundry list of other stuff to numerous to mention (like the CPU fan would suddenly stop working).

I took it to the local independant computer store I bought it from a good number of times. Most of the time the said the problem could not be replicated (AKA compu-geek for operator error). They also managed to blame it on Comp games (even though the crashes and lockups happened when I wasnt gaming as well), and in the end the Operating System (which at that time was Windows Me).

I decided screw them, its broke, they cant figure it out, so might as well figure it out myself. The worse thing that could happen is I break my already broken computer. Did all the basic stuff first, scan disk, updated all drivers, scan disk some more (screamed at it when it corrupted a 40pg Term Paper I was working on for school). Bought XP-Pro and installed it. It didnt help diddly. Oh well. I had a number of hard-drives one being a known good hard drive. Installed that, didnt help. Borrowed some known good sticks of RAM from a friend. More various iterations of didnt help. So I ended up doing the unthinkable.

I bought a new motherboard (an ASUS in case you were wondering). I checked Microsofts Approved Hardware List (I didnt know if it helped), bought the new MB and 1/2 gig of RAM (Corsair in case you were wondering also approved by Microsoft and recommended by ASUS), and installed them both. The damn computer has worked without a hitch ever since. Just out of curiosity I installed Me later and found out that Me was alot more stable then people gave it credit for, at least on my rig.

Now was the MB the problem? Like I said, I'm no expert but when I replaced it the problems went away.

Am I saying you should get your MB replaced? Not necessarily. Lemur and Blodrast have it on the head. Carefully eliminate the variables, and once you narrowed down the field then your on your way to getting it fixed. In my experience bad MBs will cause errors that suggest everything else, so they are the hardest to pin down.

LOL all that to say listen to Blodrast and Lemur, they sound like they know what they're doing.

[CrossLOPER]

Well, the laptop can't get much worse. Since it's in such awful shape and I've got nothing to lose, I'll try the stuff suggested.

That being said, I'm still open to more suggestions in the mean time as well as reliable links to diagnostic tools.

[Whacker]

Crossloper, I've had a few situations similiar to what you're describing, in each case it turned out to be the mobo going bad (IDE controller in all 3 cases). Certainly try the other suggestions that folks have put forward in here first, but my $5 is that your mobo is going bad. Best of luck.

[CrossLOPER]

Whacker, this is what I have suspected for over a month, but GS can find nothing. Does anyone know how I can check on the mother board on a laptop?

[Whacker]

Erm.. Geek Squad is ... kinda useless, IMO. /shrug

No, noone will be able to test the mobo except the manufacturer, who has special equipment for that kind of thing. Your best bet at this point is to probably raise a ruckus, in a polite manner. Clearly it's failing, they've acknowledged the problem, and haven't fixed it. Demand it be fixed. It's under warranty, so they have to do it. If they try to argue with you, pull out your warranty and demand it be fixed. And I highly doubt their claim of "stable for two days", which to them probably meant "leave it alone and don't touch it for two days".